Cosmonauts Vyacheslav Zudov and Valery Rozhdestvensky arrived at the station, but an equipment malfunction did not allow docking and the mission had to be aborted.

While there was no concern about any immediate threat to the crew, the capsule sank under the surface of the frozen lake, and recovery took nine hours owing to fog and other adverse conditions.

On 16 October 1976, Soyuz 23 returned to Earth and landed at 17:45:53 UTC, but weather conditions were poor and the cosmonauts experienced an unusual recovery.

No attempt was made to open the hatch as the recovery crews assumed the cosmonauts were dead, so they called for a special team to remove their bodies.

Eventually, eleven hours after splashdown, the capsule was opened, and the crew was found unconsious due to CO2 accumulation in the submerged and powered down vessel.

[5] Press releases by Soviet news agency TASS announced that there had been a water landing and that the cosmonauts were recovered safely, but made no mention of the rescue operation involved and the details of it were not revealed until the era of glasnost a decade later.